The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users by expanding the capabilities of mobile electronic devices. One area in which there is a demand to increase ease of information transfer relates to the delivery of services to a user of a mobile terminal. The services may be in the form of a particular media or communication application desired by the user, such as a music player, a game player, an electronic book, short messages, email, content sharing, web browsing, etc. The services may also be in the form of interactive applications in which the user may respond to a network device in order to perform a task or achieve a goal. Alternatively, the network device may respond to commands or request made by the user (e.g., content searching, mapping or routing services, etc.). The services may be provided from a network server or other network device, or even from the mobile terminal such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a mobile navigation system, a mobile computer, a mobile television, a mobile gaming system, etc.
Due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile electronic devices, people of all ages and education levels are now utilizing mobile terminals to communicate with other individuals or contacts, receive services and/or to share information, media and other content. Additionally, given recent advances in processing power, battery life, the availability of peripherals such as global positioning system (GPS) receivers and the development of various applications, mobile electronic devices are increasingly used by individuals for receiving mapping or navigation services in a mobile environment. For example, cellular telephones and other mobile communication devices may be equipped with GPS and may be able to provide routing services based on existing map information and GPS data indicative of the location of the cellular telephone or mobile communication device of a user.
Despite the great utility of enabling mobile users to utilize mapping or navigation services, a common problem related to providing such services relates to the availability and/or maintenance of maps that are up to date or current. The routine maintenance, construction, and/or development of roads or other travel routes, which may experience change on a nearly continuous basis in some regions, may make it a challenging or expensive undertaking to maintain current maps upon which to base the provision of such services. Additionally, in some remote areas, the infrequency of such changes, or the lack of demand for routine updates to maps may make the updating of such maps non-viable from an economic standpoint. Thus, the provision of good service could be expensive, while a failure to update maps may result in users developing a low opinion of the service provided.
Some developments have been made aimed at enabling the users of devices with positioning capabilities to share information that can be used to update map services. In this regard, for example, the there are services which enable users to manually upload changes they detect to the system. Service staff may then verify the uploaded changes for use by other service users to update their maps. This type of updating requires a relatively large amount of resources for verification by the network side (e.g., sending out personnel to verify the change) and usually enables update intervals on the order of every month. However, more rapid response to change requests may be desirable in some cases.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide an improved mechanism by which maps may be updated.